The Global War

Although the Western Front absorbed the vast bulk of British resources, the war was truly global in its extent.

Some of the earliest campaigns were directed against German African and Far Eastern colonies. As the Western Front became deadlocked, new fronts were opened in the Dardanelles and in Salonika in the hope that a decisive blow in these areas would undermine the Central Powers’ position. However, these fronts just created further problems. The Allies had been forced to withdraw from the Dardanelles by January 1916; in April, British and Indian forces in Mesopotamia surrendered to the Turks at Kut. The prolonged German guerrilla campaign in East Africa, while having little impact on the wider war, drained British colonial resources and brought famine and disease to large areas.